Just a note to let you know the Weekly Specials will be back next week. I’m having a few back problems that are keeping me from doing much as I’m used to, but after 4 weeks, I think it’s finally getting better.
After our lunch at Megg’s, we decided we had to do some recipes with pork belly. The project was spearheaded by my brother, who bought a whole pork belly from Pederson’s. You have to order them ahead of time, so they don’t cut it up to make bacon. And actually, it took two trips to get one pork belly, because they couldn’t find the first one we ordered, but it was so worth it. First of all, it was gorgeous and lean, and incredibly reasonably priced. Be prepared to bring home a 16-18 lb whole belly. But come on, who doesn’t like bacon, even in a whole form?
My brother smoked the whole thing with applewood for 5 hours, so it was awesome, just like that. But then, we cut it into chunks and sautéed it for grits, then for brie / mushroom ravioli from Pasta and Co., with eggs for breakfast, in an Asian tuna, olive salad…… It goes with everything!! Our next project is to cut squares out of the pork belly, sear them, and make sliders.
If you can’t smoke meat at your house, Pederson’s can smoke the whole belly, and will sell it to you that way also.